Model Alekseevka Penal Colony No. 25: Torture, Abuse, Fabrication of Criminal Cases…

The network of institutions under the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine (SPSU) continues to be closed to the public and journalists. This is especially true where human rights are systematically violated. Convicts have no way of reporting rights violations to the competent authorities in a manner prescribed by law, and the competent authorities, such as the prosecutor’s office, fail to react appropriately, even when faced with signs of crimes committed by state officials. Individuals who have committed such violations continue to hold state positions, persisting in criminal activities—people who complain about violations are subjected to torture, and criminal cases are fabricated against them under Article 391 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (Malicious disobedience to the requirements of the administration of a penal institution). Conviction takes place directly within the colony, without transfer to a court, and a person, due to their complaints about staff actions, receives an additional term—three years of imprisonment.

Not all SPSU institutions are the same. As convicts say, in some, they are treated like human beings—in their opinion, this depends on the leadership, the ‘master’—where they work in enterprises, receive a stable, albeit small, salary, can use the commissary, and use mobile phones, albeit illegally. As for other institutions, only alarming signals are received: convicts inflict injuries upon themselves and attempt suicide to draw attention to their plight, using any means to delay their transfer to such a colony.

Which of the department’s institutions meets the minimum international standards for the detention of convicts? In which colony does the staff create conditions for resocialisation and social adaptation—in other words, changing the attitude of those serving sentences towards committing crimes and altering their social behaviour? In the opinion of the SPSU leadership, Alekseevka Penal Colony No. 25 is a model in every respect.

VK No. 25 is located in the city of Kharkiv, in the centre of the Alekseevka residential area. For many years, the head—the ‘master’—of the penal colony has been Viktor Hryhorovych Khyrnyi. The VK No. 25 enterprise manufactures trailers for passenger cars of various modifications with a completed technological cycle (70% of total production volume), furniture and carpentry, metal products, building materials, household inventory, and consumer goods. The enterprise’s production facilities annually manufacture commercial goods worth over 17 million UAH, which are in demand on the market. For ‘significant personal contribution to the resolution of operational-service tasks of the criminal-executive system’, by Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine No. 505 of 19 April 2004, the head of Alekseevka Penal Colony No. 25, V. Khyrnyi, was awarded a certificate of honour (*Status Quo*, Kharkiv, 21.04.2004). The ‘master’ created a medical isolation ward, a social-psychological service department, and renovated a block dormitory for convicts—the state cares for its citizens, even those who find themselves behind bars; the new buildings of the Alekseevka colony impress the viewer (OTB, Kharkiv Regional State Television and Radio Company, 12.08.2013). There is progressive experience of cooperation with the local zoo, which, due to financial problems, keeps rare animals at the colony’s expense and on its territory—as reported in a news segment, ‘prisoners call their guardianship of the animals soul-saving and create "luxury" conditions for the pets’ (*NTV Television Company*, 16.01.2008).



However, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, in its report on a visit to Ukraine in December 2012, noted that regarding Alekseevka VK No. 25, the Committee’s delegation got the impression that ill-treatment of prisoners had become almost a routine function for maintaining order and combating prison subculture. Colony staff use carefully selected groups of prisoners to ensure the submissive behaviour of all inmates from the very beginning of their stay in the colony. Inmates interviewed complained of ill-treatment that could be defined as torture.

‘My name is Vladimir Vladimirovich Bordun, born in 1957. I was in the Alekseevka Penal Colony. I am a citizen of Ukraine. I never thought that citizens of Ukraine could be abused like this. In Alekseevka Penal Colony No. 25 in the city of Kharkiv, there is a seven-storey building where people work around the clock practically for free, for three, for four packs of cigarettes. They beat, they beat with sticks. They beat people so hard that grown men would wet themselves and fall, screaming. In the disciplinary isolation ward—hands behind your head—run. They tightened handcuffs; many have scars on their wrists from handcuffs, lifelong scars. They kick with their feet, put a tanker’s helmet on your head, turn on "Rammstein" music, and the person just lies there. This is all posted on the "ORD" website; I am there under my own surname. Information was posted in 2011.’

The publication ‘Naked Truth or a Look from the Inside at the Kharkiv Colony’ (ORD website, 21.06.2011) is a cry for help from a person who knew that in 2012 they would return to the 25th colony, where a cruel reprisal and revenge awaited them for complaining about torture by the staff.

This man was taken to another facility, where he complained about torture and ill-treatment to representatives of the UN mission. A criminal case was opened, the fate of which is unknown. ‘Since B. V. Bordun had a conflict with the administration of Penal Colony No. 25 during his previous stay there, we draw your attention to the possibility of a violation of the convict’s rights in the event of his transfer to Penal Colony No. 25’ (from a request of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group dated 3 February 2012 to the SPSU).

From the story of V. Bordun:

‘…I arrived in Kharkiv on 12 April 2012; when my imprisonment in Sokal ended, they brought me from there and were waiting there. I am not a resident of Kharkiv; I was beaten, I was tortured with electric tasers, they put a plastic bag on my head, I went through such torture there. Popov—Lieutenant Colonel Popov—is an executioner; Olkhovsky—the executioner is the head of the colony. And I received a term in the colony upon arrival—whether I want it or not, after an operation at the institute, Professor Zemyatin Petr Alekseevich performed a complex operation on me at the fourth emergency hospital.

…They gave me an injection after the operation; they gave me "Aminazin" as if it were a painkiller. I went, in the assembly hall, there is no prisoner’s dock, under Article 391—with jokes and banter, the prosecutor requested three years and one month. And I had 75 days left, that is, forty-five days were minused. The judge says, "Is there anyone waiting for you out there in freedom?" I say, "Well, of course, I am finishing my fifteen years, my family is waiting, we already bought a laptop," and she says to me, "Oh, I just arrived from Yalta myself." And to write somewhere! "I see you wrote complaints to Europe regarding that term."

…Violations are given to all prisoners there like this—they summon you and force you to write explanations under dictation, they don’t let a person write a single extra word, a comma, under dictation. Explanations are all drawn up in advance about violations. They gave me one for cleaning, but I didn’t even have my glasses, and this was nothing less than torture—I was forced to collect cobwebs that I couldn’t see. 69 violations I have, all in the 25th. In fifteen years, I had no violations anywhere else, all in Alekseevka Colony No. 25, all of them invented and not worth a damn.

…They didn’t familiarise me with my rights, and when the court trial was happening, Popov and Nekrasov—the head of the operational unit and the first deputy—stood behind my back. And if I said something wrong, they would tug at my jacket. That was the kind of court trial I had; they stood right up close, supposedly as guards, but they were whispering to me, "What are you saying there?"

…And how they beat—they beat so professionally, with their hands, cruelly, sharply; the Germans didn’t create such things. 25 days after my operation on 12 April 2012—after an operation on my lung and liver—they threw me onto the floor of the disciplinary isolation ward in the Kharkiv colony, the stitches became infected, I was fifty-five years old. I think, "God, people lie in hospitals for half a year, and they threw me into an isolation ward and started a criminal case for cleaning." And I am not allowed to lift anything more than two kilograms, and they mocked me on purpose. Now this cleaning is not needed by anyone, but I have all the materials about the cleaning, and they gave me three years quickly and said, "If you complain, we will find you everywhere—it is one department. They will call and close you off, and in any colony, they will add more to your term."’

We wrote about the application of Article 391 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine as a punitive mechanism for criminal reprisal against convicts by staff using their power (‘Sign for a New Term’, *Dzerkalo Tyzhnia* No. 7, 26.02.2011). This method of oppressing people has remained since the days of the ‘GULAG’.

The *corpus delicti* provided for by Article 391 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine establishes criminal liability for malicious disobedience to the requirements of the administration of a penal institution. The disposition of this article is set out as follows: ‘Malicious disobedience to the requirements of the administration of a penal institution or other opposition to the administration in the lawful exercise of its functions by a person serving a sentence in the form of restriction of liberty or in the form of imprisonment, if this person, for violating the requirements of the sentence-serving regime, has been subjected within a year to a penalty in the form of transfer to a cell-type room (solitary confinement) or was transferred to a more rigorous regime of serving the sentence.’

Such a structure for the disposition of this norm directly contradicts the publicly proclaimed conceptual foundations of the new Criminal Code of Ukraine, according to which one of its advantages is considered to be precisely that in it, the legislator abandoned references to administrative prejudice as a condition for criminal liability. Previously (under the Criminal Code of Ukraine of 1960), this led to administrative misdemeanours being automatically recognised as crimes upon their repeat commission, which in turn led to the unjustified criminalisation of a certain part of acts.

We have been receiving information about the violation of the rights of convicts in VK No. 25 for many years from persons who have been released or transferred to other SPSU institutions. In addition to V. Bordun’s testimony, there is testimony from other persons who served sentences in the 25th colony. During a press conference at the UNIAN agency (04.10.2013), former prisoners openly named the institution’s head, Khyrnyi, and his deputy, Popov, as persons who committed and are committing criminal offences—torture and ill-treatment—against convicts. Popov personally, and Khyrnyi using his authority—with the help of convicts who are under his control as head of the colony (the ‘master’).







We remember the loud scandal in the penitentiary sphere of Georgia when the entire staff of the prison department’s leadership was dismissed following nationwide outrage, the cause of which was the publication on social networks of a video recording of staff at a penal facility abusing prisoners. What needs to be done to stop torture and ill-treatment in Alekseevka Colony No. 25? Is it really necessary to publish a video as proof of torture, and then to massively take to the streets and demand an end to the disorder and abuse of people—many years of it, and bloody?!

I would like to learn from the Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine about the status of criminal proceeding No. 42012220090000028-27-012—opened by the Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine on 12 December 2012 under Article 365, Part 2, and mentioned by convict V. Bordun. Does the Prosecutor’s Office not consider the very fact of convicting V. Bordun to a three-year prison term 75 days before the end of his fifteen-year term to be a direct act of revenge by the leadership of the 25th colony for Bordun complaining about torture and ill-treatment to representatives of the UN Committee?

And in conclusion. One cannot speak of humanising the penal system or matching the level of prisoner detention to minimum standards as long as torture, ill-treatment, and violations of the honour and dignity of convicts continue in the department’s institutions—that is, what I am deeply convinced is happening at Alekseevka Colony No. 25.

The fact that the number of testimonies is growing instils hope that the SPSU leadership and the Prosecutor’s Office will, after all, be forced to react to the facts of torture and abuse.

Regarding the 25th colony, an objective prosecutorial investigation must be conducted into the facts of torture and ill-treatment, as well as abuse of office, the fabrication of criminal case materials, especially under Article 391 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, and other official crimes, and the results should be provided with an appropriate legal assessment and prosecutorial response.